Last Night on Mad Men: The Naked and the Dread

Before we kick off the Mad Men rundown, let me mention that I just caught up with the season 7 opener of Larry David's Curb Your Enthusiasm (HBO), which was welcomed like a long-lost annoying old friend by most of the reviewers I scanned online, one of whom described himself as "weak with laughter" at Larry's incorrigible, contankerous antics. It takes a certain weak-mindedness traveling south to leave one incapacitated by comedy this low-leveled. I'm not sure what's more appalling: how shrill and lousy the opening episode was, or how eagerly the reviewers wolfed it up, as if grateful for what David slopped into their food dish after a two-year hiatus. Leaving aside the stale recyclings from Seinfeld (Larry's fuming over a guest raiding his refrigerator without asking first echoed Elaine's helping herself to olives in Seinfeld's "Bizarro Jerry" episode), the setup and rhythms of Curb Your Enthusiasm have become as mechanical and predictable as the crusty vaudeville sketch cranked out by Neil Simon's Sunshine Boys: scene after scene in which a minor misunderstanding or irritable habit or trivial dispute escalates into a yelling match as if the only dial on David's console is a volume knob that goes from loud to louder to two-angry-putzes-barking-at-the-top-of-their-lungs. It makes for wearying monotony; the quieter, slyer byplay that David once enjoyed with Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen, for example, seems to have been lost in this echo chamber of hollering. And having a black family (whose name actually is Black) living under Larry's roof has worn out its welcome as a plot device, degenerating into sitcom gimmickry. The blatant use of the Black family doesn't so much explode racial stereotypes as perpetuate those stereotypes in a crinkly wrapper of self-conscious buffoonery that might offend black viewers if Curb Your Enthusiasm had any.

Most disturbing for me—downright disheartening—is the masochistic direction the great Catherine O'Hara appears to have taken. The zany sanity and daredevil originality O'Hara brought to SCTV and Christopher Guest's Best in Show and A Mighty Wind has thickened into something self-loathing or at least self-punishing; it was no fun watching her self-deluded Oscar nominee in Guest's For Your Consideration make a fool of herself and so alter herself with plastic surgery to look younger that her face became a fright mask with a red clown mouth. It was as if the film was humiliating her for fancying herself a star, cruelly putting in her place after she was silly enough to get her vain hopes up. One might dismiss For Your Consideration as an unfortunate one-off, but here in Curb Your Enthusiasm cast as a mentally ill woman named Bam-Bam (sister of Super Dave Osborne's hoarse hothead), who, after giving a spasmodic performance of a crazy person on the sofa, zinging non sequiturs right and left, invites Larry's agent and pal Jeff upstairs for sex—"Fuck me, fat boy!" her voice bellows from behind a closed door, and all I could think was, So this is what it's come to... Catherine O'Hara really deserves better than to be cast as a booby-hatch caricature, but then again she played the character as pure caricature, as if she didn't think she deserved better, or was so happy for the opportunity to be working with Larry that she just over-obliged on doing the buggy obvious. As with Woody Allen's minimal direction, Larry David's non-guidance system of auteurship hurts as many performers as it helps, leaving too many of them to fend for themselves in this glorified vacuum of Comedy Genius at Work. David is a genius, but on a very narrow frequency.

So now to Mad Men, the reason we're here, wherever "here" is.It's hard to imagine they'll be able to top last week's Renegade Lawnmower Massacree, in which a rampaging John Deere riding mower possessed by the spirit of a Stephen King novel turned the carpeted offices of Sterling Cooper into a killing field and left a young David Frost lame and bleeding, taking a lot of the fizz out of Joan's moribund going-away party. After such macabre slapstick, this week's chapter begins with a tantalizing series of recumbent tableaux, little teasers dipped in enigma.

There's Peggy, her arm dangling over the side of the bed and swinging like a limp clock hand. Who's the stiff in the bed next to her, another college-boy pickup or someone possessing more social stature once he's standing up rather than lying down, deep in snoresville? There's Betty, in luxurious repose, seemingly adrift in her own thoughts in a gondola made of dreams. This series of sun-buttered still lives ends with our mysterious antihero and manwich, Don Draper, sprawled face down on the floor, his hungover face smudged as he groggily rises to his feet and shakes off the cobwebs between his ringing ears. After making himself presentable for capitalist society, he emerges downstairs in the joyless Draper household, makes a snap interior-decorating decision that reveals he possesses a sure aesthetic eye, and then it's off to the soulless midtown office, where new carpet has been laid over the spot where David Frost was felled.

Awaiting him is hotel magnate Conrad Hilton (Chelcie Ross), his surprise drop-in at Sterling Cooper leaving the rest of the ad staff loitering like wallflowers on American Bandstand. Sitting behind Don's desk as if trying to see the world through Draper's bloodshot eyes, Connie, with kindly concern, laments the lack of a Bible and family photos on the denuded stage of Don's executive workspace. It doesn't seem right, this show of non-show of personal effects. Don makes a feeble quip that Connie sees right through, like Obi Wan-Kenobi parting the mist. Connie is the strangest mixture of father confessor-guardian angel-benign benefactor, romancing Don as if he were the Holy Ghost looking for an adopted son in whom he can infuse his spirit, his every business proposition coming across as an astral projection. As Don and Connie exit toward the elevator lobby together, Don's blue-chip cooler-than-shit status breaks its 52-week high on the stock exchange.

Betty's polka dot sleeveless domestic goddess hostess shirtwaist dress meets with my approval, even if she only wears it to answer the phone, like some femme fatale June Cleaver. "...and we can take a hike to the reservoir," suggests the male voice at the other end of the line. Isn't that one of Governor Sanford's old come-ons? I wonder if Betty will pack a picnic basket filled with her favorite brand of smokes, a tiny revolver, and elegant little sandwiches with the crusts trimmed?

Ah, so my friend Emily Gordon (empress of Emdashes) was right! She emailed me her suspicion that "Duck" would be pitching woo to Peggy, and an Hermes scarf makes for some mighty fine woo. It was the dashing turtleneck Duck wore at the restaurant meeting that Pete so rudely flounced out of that tipped Emily off to Duck's amorous agenda.

The interior of the bakery where Betty and her platonic date rendezvous is pure Twin Peaks, though if it were truly Twin Peaks there would be a pert, hot brunette behind the pastry counter fingering an eclair until one of the town boys passed out from rapid puberty onset.

I used to walk around elementary school with a large cardboard box on my head, and no one told me about any eclipse.

I like how everyone on Mad Men assumes Don Draper is someone in whom they can confide, despite the gravitational push exerted by his surly desire to be left alone and unsolicited.

Meanwhile, on her discreet outdoor excursion interlude with Another Man (who shields her eyes during the eclipse as stealing an intimacy), Betty doesn't exactly exude personality-plus, pausing between clipped, noncommittal remarks as if to have her picture taken with her wrist cocked at the perfect angle. Maybe she's rehearsing in her mind how she's going to hold the telephone in her next kitchen scene which will have her tersely chatting away while, under her unwatchful eye, her son and daughter lateral the new baby back and forth like a football before attempting a downfield pass into the living room.

That's quite a scolding Don's giving Peggy (that line about her always having her hand in his pocket), as if chewing out a subordinate is the only way he knows how to truly unwind. And what was so wrong about her sounding him out about the Hilton account? Don Draper must be the only ad exec who believes telepathy is the preferred form of interoffice communication.

"...Take your clothes off with my teeth"—Duck, you randy pirate of lusty conquest! He's clearly been saving up a lot of libido for this boarding party on Peggy's body!

Don doesn't want to talk business at the office and he doesn't want to talk business at home, so at least he's consistent. But when Betty has the infuriating cheek to ask him about something that affects their entire family, Don huffs out of the house with his car keys as his passport to adventure, his inscrutable face faintly lit by the illuminated dashboard as he drives into the aorta of the American night, much like Rabbit Angstrom hitting the road in Updike's Rabbit, Run, a novel I keep meaning to re-read.

Don pulls over to pick up a young pair of hitchhikers. Anyone familiar with the conventions of noir knows that picking up hitchhikers is the quickest way to get yourself embroiled in melodrama, especially if there's a mental institution or prison nearby that's missing a resident or two within the last 48 hours. But Don plays by his own rules and risk calculus, as if courting rough trade. These kids seem harmless, however, as if in a few years they'll be swaying like willows at some hippie concert where acid heads are blowing bubbles and entertaining Blakean visions that can be expressed only with an all-encompassing "Wow." But of course on Mad Men nothing is what it "seems," the veils of illusion overlapping into the shimmer of samsara.

So the pre-honeymoon couple hitchhiking to Niagara Falls is offering Don (whom they've nicknamed "Cadillac," the presumptuous little shits) red barbies*? I think we now know how Don ended up face-planted.

That lodge where the three of them call it a night is also so very Twin Peaks (the wood panelling, the reddish glow), and the apparition with the moonshine jug completes the picture, the sucker punch to the back of Don's head providing the final Lynch-shock punctuation. I'm sure glad I've never come home reeking of alcohol, with a knot on the back of my head and one side of my face smushed with rug burns, because once Laura finished laughing she would want an explanation, and I don't think amnesia works anywhere except on soap operas. Don, however, simply preempts concerned inquiries by muttering something about a "fender-bender," his dark knighthood shielding him from further incursions into the portable inner sanctum in which he's transparently enclosed.

That fainting couch in front of the fireplace is a design faux pas WRIT LARGE, though when Betty stretches out her pristine legs how can one not think of Grace Kelly prettily recumbent in Rear Window? "People gather around a fire place even if there's no fire," the interior designer explains to Betty, stressing the centrality of the hearth, but Betty's idea of hearth is a shrine to herself. Her hostess entertaining will involve inviting neighbors and Don's business associates over to watch her mope and pout on the royal barge, a drama queen's version of purgatorial bliss. It's as if Betty's narcissism is building a nude ice sculpture of itself. (Alone with her smoky thoughts, her hands slide down her thighs as if a self-pleasuring session will commence once she surrenders to the moment.) Meanwhile, Bobby and Sally are down in the basement, playing with matches and conducting a seance to contact their dead grandfather, and outside the Sixties prepare to sprout tufty hair and pick up murderous speed.

All in all, my favorite Mad Men of the season so far. The show stayed (and played) within itself, advancing several storylines and not dawdling at the clouded mirror to admire its own mystique. The biggest revelation was that Duck has an outboard motor clapped to his lover-man behind, and he's ready to rip. The hillbilly moonshine apparition channeling Don's lacerating inner voice of doubt and lack of self-worth—Mr. Flannel Drawers taunts Don for never making anything with his hands, and it's true, Don can't whittle for shit, anymore than I can shed the shame of walking around elementary school with a large cardboard box on my head—was a hokey miscue, ditto the ten-ton irony of playing "16 Tons" ("another day older and deeper in debt") to usher in the closing credits. Yes, Don's just signed away his temporary freedom, but advertising was a glamorous profession in the Sixties—Don and his cohorts are drinking, smoking, banging bouffanted cuties, and dining in the choicest restaurants—and yet Mad Men insists with puritan zeal on accenting the duty and drudgery of descending with your brief case into the coal mines Monday through Friday, slaving to keep the wives and kiddies Pepsodent bright. Mad Men works with a dual perspective—how the characters view their lives as opposed to how we view the decade in hindsight—that can slide into facile revisionism. But tonight both lenses were sharp, distinct. To us, Don Draper seems young, but to the upcoming Sixties generation he's another tired dad behind the wheel of a status symbol who just happens to be in the way.